Healthcare frustration from Obama and Gibbs

With Congress almost certain to miss President Obama’s deadline to pass healthcare reform legislation before the August recess, there were words of frustration from the President and his team Tuesday.

In the afternoon, Mr. Obama made the 10 minute trip from the White Hosue to the massive 6th and E Street headquarters of AARP, the powerful advocacy group for older Americans. There, the President answered questions from 60 people in the studio audience and from callers around the country.

According to a report from the press pool that followed him to the event, Obama got a laugh from the audience in Studio A when he told them about getting a letter from a woman who said, “I don’t want government-run healthcare. I don’t want socialized medicine, and don’t touch my Medicare.”

A frustrated president

At one point, Obama acknowledged, “Sometimes I get a little frustrated, because this is one of those situations where it is so obvious that the system we have isn’t working well for too many people, and that we could just be doing better." The president added: “We’ve got to have the courage to be able to change things.”

Meanwhile, at Tuesday’s White House briefing, spokesman Robert Gibbs accused healthcare reform opponents of knowingly spreading inaccurate information “to hold up progress on health reform. I think that's about as obvious as the sun having come up this morning in the east.”